Journey Into Amazing Caves Page #2

tiny specks out in the middle of nowhere,

you know I started thinking ...

"we are going to be

here for awhile".

The expedition is led by

Frenchman Janot Lamberton.

Janot has gone deeper into ice

caves than anyone else alive.

In summer,

melting ice creates raging rivers,

which plunge into the caves,

cutting them deeper and deeper.

Heat from the sun can weaken ice.

These jumbled blocks were

once the roof of a cave ...

just like the one we are

about to venture into.

We started early so we wouldn't

be inside when the roof collapsed.

Once I dropped into the cave,

I focused on how

awesome it was to be ...

one of the first people

to see that place.

The ice is alive and you can

hear it creak and groan ...

as it all inches very

slowly towards the sea.

The ice is a databank,

storing centuries of information

for the team's glaciologist,

Dr Luc Moreau.

And also the ice is a

memory of the climate.

You see different layer ...

a blue layer represent the summer ...

and white layer represent the winter,

so we can calculate

the age of the ice here.

The glacier is truly a time capsule,

the deeper you go,

the more the seasonal

layers are compressed.

Only 60 ft. down,

Hazel can collect samples

which fell as snow,

centuries ago.

Err so far we so far found just

bunches of different bacteria:

gram negative, gram positive,

cocci, spyrokeets ...

all kinds of cool looking stuff,

and the thing is there's not much I

can do with them here in the field,

the only thing I can do this freeze

them down and take them back with me.

The bacteria Hazel wants most ...

lie buried beneath 500 ft. of ice.

The team cannot descend the deep

until there is a four day cold snap ...

to stop the flow of water.

They soon get their wish.

The other day it was -12 centigrade

with a windshield of -26 centigrade ...

which is colder than a freezer ...

so it was very cold, bitterly cold.

Big-time.

Too cold to be pleasant.

Waiting for the water to

freeze up is the hardest part,

because we're out in

the middle of an ice cap,

there's not a whole lot to do.

This is definitely a caver's haircut.

To prepare for the deep descent,

Nancy has to learn to measure

the movement of the ice,

as the cave walls are slowly pushed in by

the tremendous weight of the glacier.

Oh, so from this point to this point ...

is what we measure

how it closes, okay.

Four days into the cold snap,

Janot decided to risk perhaps

his deepest descent ever,

to get samples for Hazel.

Only days ago this

was a deadly waterfall.

The deeper you go,

the more unstable the ice becomes.

Janot has seen ice boulders burst

from the walls like cannon shots.

loose without warning.

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